New global realities and their impact on the accounting profession;

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New Global Realities and Their Impact on the
Accounting Profession†
Edward A. Kangas*
Deloitte & Touche
It's great to come back here. Back east we don't have a sky like this. You
can't see the clouds on the horizon because you can't see the horizon. It's
different. I remember so many things about my days at KU, five of the best
years of my life. Some of the people here helped me get to where I am, and
a lot of faculty members such as John Tollefson, Joe Pichler, John Blocker,
Howard Stettler, Arno Knapper, and a bunch of others were very important
to me. I learned a lot of things here about business, accounting and finance,
but I learned a lot more about things that I have reflected on with my col-leagues
a number of times: The importance of communication and the abil-ity
to write. Leadership a team sport. Sometimes in life, in business and
life, taking the trip is more important than the destination. I learned about
the power of consensus. I learned the fact that in many organizations power
flows up, not down. I don't know if I would have learned all this any other
place, so I have very special feelings about this University. So I thank you for
being here.
My purpose is to talk about one of my favorite topics: the accounting pro-fession.
I am not going to talk about auditing because there are too many peo-ple
here that know more about auditing than I do. But I am going to talk about
auditing firms, and some things that I call the new global realities that have
impacted our firms, our markets, our clients, causing us to rethink the way
we are organized, what we do, how we do it, and what we are all about. I've
identified fourteen or so, such realities, just by simply reflecting back on what
it is that I have watched happen in the last ten years for sure, but maybe for
the last three, four, or five as they became more intense. Let me start. I'll go
through them quickly.
Individually, I think you're going to find that none of these are earth shat-tering,
and I doubt that I am going to tell you very many things that you don't
know. If you take them together, however, and paint the mosaic of what has
confronted the profession, and especially the big international, multi-national
accounting firms, I think you may get a sense of just how much buffeting, or
†This paper is an audio transcript of the keynote speech delivered by Ed Kangas at the
symposium.
*Edward A. Kangas is Managing Partner of Deloitte & Touche. We are very proud that Ed grad-uated
from the University of Kansas with B.S. (1966) and M.S. (1967) in accounting.
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